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Home, Home on the Harangue

Listen here:
We’re talking about jobs,
Jobs you can count on,
Jobs you can build a future on,
Jobs you need to get back on your feet,
Good jobs, more jobs than people to fill them,
More people at work than any time in history,
Jobs you don’t question, but answer: “Yes sir!”

Write a book of poems in which
Every poem ends with the same word: freedom.
It won’t do any good. It won’t
Make the wild stallion with flaring nostrils
          and gleaming hindquarters come
                    any closer. Or will it?
Tell it to the Jews who exterminate Nazis
          on other planets.
Tell it to the $500,000 it cost to kill
          each soldier in Vietnam.
Tell it to the riverboats loaded only with
          Dried buffalo tongues.

Home, home on the harangue,
Where the anti-work-ethic plays,
Where seldom are heard discouraging words
          that I’m self-impaled on my hobbyhorse and preaching,
Gesticulating pipsqueak posturing delusions
          of megalomaniac grandeur
                    on the staggering stage of Eternity.

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Antler is the former Poet Laureate of Milwaukee. He is the author of Selected Poems; Open Bible With A Gun On It; and Exclamation Points ad Infinitum!, among others. His poems have also appeared in the recent anthologies Poets Against the War, and An Eye For An Eye Leaves The Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11.

Links
Sample Poems
Anlter: The Selected Poems
Antler Fan-Site
Antler on Wikipedia